Current approaches for migrating large quantities (for example, gigabytes) of data from relational data stores on various database platform sources, such as Windows NT, AIX, Linux, Solaris, and other database platforms, to databases on disparate target platforms, such as IBM “DB2 UDB for OS/390,” do not perform well and are overly complex. Poor performance and complexity can be attributed to a variety of causes including (1) using SQL in a multi-step process to both extract the data from the source data store and place the data into the target data store, (2) storing the data in one or more intermediate data stores (e.g. local file systems) during data migration, (3) performing multiple datatype conversions as the data is moved between environments, (4) using less efficient and inefficient data transfer mechanisms, and (5) using data migration processes that are not fully automated.